Lawsuit over green cards a class action

Published 5:30 am, Monday, October 18, 2004

Efforts to force the U.S. Homeland Security Department to issue green cards to thousands of legal immigrants surged ahead last week when a federal judge ordered a lawsuit by the Texas Lawyers' Committee certified as a class action.

The ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in San Francisco means the Lawyers' Committee and a San Francisco law firm that is donating its services will be able to include an estimated 10,000 legal immigrants nationwide in the lawsuit.

"As a practical matter, it would have been impossible to bring individual claims," said David Armendariz, the Texas Lawyers' Committee staff attorney. "There are thousands and thousands throughout the land and none of them can afford lawyers."

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Michelle Rhyu, an attorney with Cooley Godward, the law firm working with the Lawyers' Committee, said of the government, "It's not my understanding that they are planning to appeal this now."

The USCIS says national security background checks are delaying the issuing of green cards, but Rhyu said the immigration courts already have undertaken extensive background checks before granting green card status.

The San Francisco lawsuit sprang from a similar lawsuit in McAllen filed by the Lawyers' Committee, a civil rights group based in San Antonio, that was certified as a class action in April.

After the Lawyers' Committee filed the lawsuit on behalf of legal immigrants in the USCIS' Houston, San Antonio and Harlingen districts, it received complaints from legal immigrants nationwide about being left in legal limbo while their backgrounds were checked.